Collected Poems

'It's a beautiful book, harmless, delightfully humorous and ironic, with an underlying vein of sadness. Its great strength is the unblinking realistic vision of the poet.' William Cooper, Daily Telegraph
'Kavanagh declared himself a man who dabbled in
verses and found they were his life, and The Green Fool is
an idyllic account of the milieu and manner of that first
dabbling, the labour of his first birth on the sharp
slopes of Monaghan. ... I enjoyed the book from the
first sentence and found it accurate and exuberant and
full of cocky delight.'
Seamus Heaney, The Listener
'He was. He is. He is also our best living poet and I
don't mean Alas!'
Frank O'Connor, Spectator
'It belongs with the best poetry that Mr Kavanagh has
written and it was written, I surmise, in the period
when he was writing his best poetry. Any man who
wrote Tarry Flynn is entitled to throw down his hat and
offer a challenge to the wide world. Tarry Flynn is a
work of art.'
Terence de Vere White, Irish Times